that'll do pig, that'll do.

Sunday night I said goodbye to our pigs.  I cried my eyes out and stood watching them as they buried their heads into feed buckets, snorting and grunting with no awareness that this was their last night on the farm. Andrew repeated the phrase that he has told me over and over again, stolen from Joel Salatin, "they have a happy life and have one bad day."

This was hard.  We knew it would be hard.  We are animals lovers to the core.  Even the ones that we like to eat.  We stepped into livestock farming because we have a deep feeling that it is the right thing to do.  All you have to do is google how animals are treated in large facilities and you know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that we treat these animals.  They deserve more from us.  They nourish our bodies and provide us energy and fuel, and in repayment they are treated incredibly cruel.  And we vote for this type of treatment every time we pick up meat from the grocery store.  We vote, blindly, yes, I don't care how these animals are treated as long as I don't have to see it.

So this is our first step in the journey.  We loved this little pigs.  We spoiled them.  We scratched them with sticks and fed them all of our scrap food.  We moved them to fresh lots every few weeks.  We let them root around in the dirt until their hearts were content.  

Yes.  It was a sad day but we know that this is the right step.  One of our farm dreams is to be able to offer meat that has been loved, cared, and respected for to our local community.  

Thank you, little pigs for your sacrifice.